Traffyck: The Thrilling Sequel to Chernobyl Murders

by Michael Beres

  Even though Lena referred to the cripples as armless, they were not all armless. But they were minus something—either one or more body parts, like larynxes or feet or breasts or testicles or any variety of limbs and organs—or they had something wrong in their heads. Several appeared to be retarded children, even though Lena told her they were in their twenties. To keep things simple, most used the term “armless” because having no arms was the most visible affliction, being these were the ones able to walk around camp on their own and not cover up their disability with jeans and shoes and sweatshirts. Even those with no visible affliction who were paranoid or demented were called armless. It made things easier, like calling them pets, even though for some reason, there were no real pets here as far as Nadia could see, only the cats that hid in the woods. Perhaps, instead of calling the cripples armless, they should be called pets.

  These were Nadia’s thoughts as she lay on her cot in the dark bunkhouse. She felt secure at the compound because here men did not come out from behind lights and cameras waggling dicks in her face … the last waggled dick blown to a stump as he turned from her…

  Peace here, rest here, lovable Lena here to care for her. Safe on the peninsula after what happened in the mountains and what could happen if they returned to Kiev. Yet, as she neared sleep, Nadia wondered what Lena was thinking, or dreaming. Perhaps Lena acted her way through life so she could eventually take Nadia away with her … But where?

  Finally, after lying awake only a few minutes, the potent sleeping pill took effect and Nadia dreamed the disjointed dreams of one still suffering from shock.

  Vasily reclined against an upended skiff on the beach staring up until moon and stars engulfed him. The aluminum skiff was cool on his back as he recalled the old days on the peninsula. Better days when Pyotr spent more time among them—cutting firewood with them, preparing computer lessons, or lending a hand to build the cafeteria. For at least a brief time, everyone had been young and enthusiastic and full of good spirits, calling the boat he leaned against Vasily’s Ark because back then it was the largest boat, the one used to bring supplies over from the left bank. Better days when he brought dogs and cats from the left bank for pets. Unfortunately, all but a few cats remained because cats could hide themselves and sometimes birthed kittens beneath the buildings.

  The aluminum skiff had outgrown its usefulness when the gray inflatables arrived. The inflatables were larger, faster, and stable in currents and waves. The inflatables, with their powerful outboard engines, were symbols for all that had gone wrong at the compound. On one side, Lyashko’s men had isolated the peninsula from the mainland with their fence and guards, and on the other, across the reservoir, they had taken over an old campground. Most inflatables stayed there, at the campground dock, with only one or two here on the beach.

  Another change that came with Lyashko’s men was the increased use of drugs, especially when indoctrinating new arrivals. Vasily disliked the use of drugs because he knew it was spreading, being used even to sedate the handicapped they were supposed to care for with open hearts, according to the man he once admired.

  Pyotr Alexeyevich Andropov was proud to share the first and second name with Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov, Peter I the Great. Like Peter I, he was tall and with silver hair, an imposing figure to one and all, even Vasily, who knew more of his past than the others did.

  Vasily knew Pyotr was once a trafficker of teenagers. Vasily knew Pyotr kidnapped teenagers and allowed traffickers down the chain to threaten their families. But Pyotr insisted he’d experienced an epiphany. Vasily knew Pyotr faked religiosity and justified it with his so-called good works in caring for Chernobyl offspring brought to the compound. Vasily had known Pyotr when the Chernobyl offspring were grotesque children no one wanted. Now they were in their twenties and needed more care than ever. Especially the ones who were psychotic.

  As Vasily stared at the stars, he wondered if he could ever speak, as they say, out of two heads, as Pyotr did. From one head, Pyotr spoke of God as a comrade who sent him prompts from some kind of heavenly computer network. Perhaps Pyotr did talk to God on a heavenly Internet. Perhaps everyone did. From the other head, Pyotr spoke of God’s representatives on Earth as fools; all organized religion nothing but hypocrisy.

  When Pyotr began the compound, he and Vasily had long discussions. Vasily felt Pyotr was being honest with him. These days, the discussions were not as long and, Vasily felt, not as honest. Yet Pyotr still insisted on these discussions with only Vasily. No one else on the peninsula shared this access to Pyotr in the main cabin on designated evenings.

  A bat flew over, blocking out stars and agitating the air near Vasily’s face. Then there was another sound, the unmistakable flip-flopping of sandals coming down the path. Vasily slid off the boat and took a step away. He saw Ivan walk onto the beach, the green Soviet Army trench coat Ivan had recently begun wearing visible in the moonlight. The greeting Ivan gave—raising his arms like Pyotr giving a blessing—made Ivan look like an officer addressing his troops.

  “Greetings, Comrade Vasily.”

  “You are insane,” said Vasily.

  “Of course I am,” said Ivan. “We are all insane. We save children and bring them here to become servants of Chernobyl cripples because we do not appreciate the making of art films. Good versus evil. Enemy entrails spread across this sandy beach. Their blown-off pricks like aborted fetuses bleeding in the sun.”

  “You are at home here,” said Vasily.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” asked Ivan.

  “The vengeance is bloody, and you enjoy it.”

  “Of course I enjoy it. We save lives, born and unborn.”

  “So, I ask you, what are the names of the drugs Lyashko’s men have supplied?”

  “One of them is called ecstasy,” said Ivan, taking out his cell phone and flipping it open. “I wish we had cell phone service here.”

  “Who would you call?” asked Vasily.

  “Perhaps I would call Mikhail Kalashnikov,” said Ivan. “He died a few years ago,” said Vasily. “Don’t you listen to your radio?”

  “In that case, I would call his family and thank them for his invention. Do you realize that even though we use modified versions manufactured under the name AKM, everyone still calls them AK-47s?”

  “I realize this,” said Vasily. “When I do not have it with me, mine is stored under lock and key. Do you have anything else on your mind this evening?”

  “I would like to have access to satellite television,” said Ivan. “I believe the education would help me learn more about my future investments.”

  “Investments?” asked Vasily.

  “Of course,” said Ivan. “I am going to set up my own compound on the other side of the reservoir. There is plenty of vacant land. The only ones who go there are bird watchers. I will create a bird-watching lodge as a disguise for my trafficking operation … Did you know in Britain women are called birds?”

  “Yes,” said Vasily.

  Ivan continued. “In any case, I will set up a trafficking network to take advantage of the economic situation in cities with the highest unemployment. There are many young women begging for work. I will create my own trail heading north out of Ukraine rather than south. While everything else goes down in value, investment in young women is the wisest investment of all. Each evening, I will spend some of my capital, if you know what I mean … But above all, I will stay away from Moldova, because the traffickers there are insane. Instead of messing with them I will continue building my muscles with my exercise equipment.”

  Rather than saying anything further, Vasily picked up his AK-47, walked up the beach, and then trotted along the main path to his cabin on the far side of the peninsula. As he ran, he wondered what this winter would be like when ice made travel across the reservoir impossible, even when using inflatables. If Ivan were still here, and still insane, and if Pyotr was still using Ivan and his boys as so-called soldiers, winter would be hell, especially with st
reetwise new arrivals to oversee. Too many new arrivals had been brought in this spring and summer, and drugs had become the only way to control them.

  In his cabin on the peninsula, Pyotr Alexeyevich Andropov also considered the fate of the summer’s new arrivals. Almost three months and many, especially the ones from the Romanian raid, still seemed independent.

  Pyotr’s cabin was large, furnished rustically with wooden chairs and tables, walled in knotty pine. He sat at a massive desk. Despite its size, the desk did not have the finely finished surface of an executive desk. It was rough hewn, its smoothness furnished by layers of lacquer.

  Pyotr had his elbows on the desk, his face in his hands. Like the others on the peninsula, he wore a blue sweatshirt and blue jeans. He was thin, and this emphasized his height. His hair was silver and thick, too silver for his age. A pair of black-framed glasses rested on the desk beside a black telephone. He took his hands from his face and put on his glasses. He seemed to concentrate for a moment, staring at his hands. The glasses made him look bookish. The face seemed pleasant and kind.

  He rose from the desk and went to a floor-to-ceiling wall cabinet. He took a key from his pocket, unlocked the cabinet. Inside were several computers, a video recorder, a satellite receiver, and a large-screen television. He flipped a switch on a power strip inside and sat on a sofa facing the open cabinet as the television came to life. The sofa was wood framed and covered with thick cushions.

  Kiev’s evening news came in via satellite from the dish antenna behind the cabin. He watched the news every evening for information about the outside world and, more recently, to see if there was any mention of missing young people or of the deaths of the pornographers in Romania. The last time he’d heard mention of Ivan and his soldiers kidnapping a teenaged prostitute from the streets of Kiev had been two weeks earlier. The last time he heard mention of the Romanian massacre, which had been conveniently blamed on rival Mafia traffickers, had been two months earlier.

  The evening news was Pyotr’s only source of up-to-date information. The evening news had led him to Ivan Babii and to the eventual “rescue” of his newest members. No news broadcast had actually mentioned Ivan Babii. What had been broadcast was a report of an American pornographic filmmaker named Donner disappearing at the very time Pyotr had assigned two of his soldiers to watch a store that sold such items.

  His soldiers, witnessing Donner’s abduction in Kiev, had followed the kidnappers and brought back a name. A man named Vakhabov from Uzbekistan was involved. After this, his soldiers followed Vakhabov whenever possible. Last spring, they’d followed him to the Romanian Carpathians. Thus, his soldiers, dressed as priests, and ironically led by his Ivan, had saved young people from an operation run by another Ivan.

  News on television that evening was mostly depressing. Mothers disposing of children; trafficking on the rise in Ukraine despite the work of international agencies and NGOs; construction of the new Chernobyl sarcophagus bogged down by lack of funds; Russia, the US, NATO, and Islamists continuing their bickering; economic systems in disarray. It was an insane world. Victims in need of help, and the only way one was able to help was to recruit the abandoned youth of Kiev and other cities in Ukraine. And of course, when necessary for required funds, the selling of hooligans who refused to cooperate. He had no choice. There was no other way. And despite his so-called preaching, he regarded all religions as false. He knew it in his soul. God was God, and that was all. Knowing this, he had been forced to make the hard decisions to help the victims of Chernobyl.

  During a report about the anti-trafficking marketing campaign across Ukraine, an inane news editor put in La Strada’s old statement from Eva Polenkaya. The handsome widow who was said to be sixty but looked years younger made her statement vigorously into the camera as if scolding him.

  “Traffickers mold the softness and innocence of youth into human software. Young people lured or kidnapped are sold through networks and moved along established routes like the Balkan Trail. Once ‘trained,’ young people are commodities to be used again and again.”

  The statement had been aired so many times Pyotr had memorized it.

  The only uplifting news tonight was an interview with a scientist from Kiev University studying the herd of wild horses and other animals in the so-called Exclusion Zone. After this brief story, Pyotr stood and went to the cabinet. After turning off the main power switch, he closed the cabinet door and locked it. Carved on the door front, by a soldier named Shvedson, who met an untimely death in a so-called female clinic in Odessa, was a circle with a cross inside. Shvedson considered it a design for the caring of Chernobyl victims, showing all four limbs intact. The carving had been an innocent gesture, yet some of the older members had taken it to heart. Pyotr returned to the sofa and sat down. He turned out the lamp next to the sofa. Now the only light came from windows. From an upper window in his sleeping loft, the moon shone down at an angle, lighting up the front of the cabinet. The symbol on the varnished surface of the cabinet in the moonlight was an eerie sight. For years trafficking had made him rich, and now he was admired, one of his followers seeing fit to create this symbol, a symbol he knew was shared with a so-called religious organization.

  It was ironic this symbol be used for his compound, because his beliefs had changed radically over the years. Despite what he taught his followers, he now believed religion served a universal purpose as yet undiscovered. The planet Earth, functioning on a much larger time scale, and in order to regenerate itself and begin anew, evolves creatures to destroy all life so the basic elements can begin again with a clean slate.

  His own life was a representation for the theory. As a boy in Moscow, he had been trafficked to the Moldavian Republic and used by many so-called men—brutes who admired his lanky frame. Then, as a young man, he escaped to the Ukraine Republic, and there he found religion. Yet, like everything else in this changing world, religion had failed him and he’d become the trafficker, until Chernobyl changed everything.

  When moonlight no longer shone on the symbol of his compound, Pyotr climbed the stairs to the sleeping loft. The steep stairs symbolized turning points in his life—his childhood climb to escape torment in the Moldavian Republic, his brief stay at the monastery in Kiev, his entry into the business of trafficking, his creation of the compound for Chernobyl victims, and finally his alteration of this dark world when he discovered he could so easily make use of SBU Deputy Anatoly Lyashko and Father Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Mariya Nemeth walked quickly from the parking lot to the terminal at Kiev’s Borispol Airport, glancing back to be certain she was not followed. In the parking lot she saw a brown station wagon behind her in the aisles, but other cars had also driven up and down aisles looking for parking spots. Inside the terminal, she confirmed the gate number of the outgoing Aerosvit flight to New York and, after going through security, stopped at a ladies’ room and stayed inside for some time. The departing flight at which she was to meet Janos Nagy did not leave for two hours. A long stay in the ladies’ room would discourage anyone following her.

  At the gate, Mariya found a seat in a corner near the windows. From there she could see everyone in the waiting area, and also new arrivals. She sat nearly an hour, watching as activity increased at the gate desk and the waiting area filled with what seemed mostly business people. She also looked all business because she wore a skirt, blouse, and jacket. Yes, the business of determining who murdered Viktor and why, the business of finding out about the vengeance of God or of those who made themselves into gods.

  On the way down the long hallway to the gate, Mariya had seen billboards advertising casinos and “dance clubs.” Two of the clubs were familiar because several years ago she had worked at them. The billboards for the clubs were grouped among billboards for restaurants and apartment rental agencies and warnings to Ukraine’s youth about trafficking recruitment scams. The billboards for the dance clubs, run by the Mogilevich syndi
cate when she worked there, used idiot names for dancers … Hers had been Kimmy.

  As Mariya waited at the gate, she saw a huge man walk past who could have been Igor, a bouncer at one of the dance clubs. When the man glanced her way and smiled, Mariya ignored him, and he got into the boarding line. Outside the window, multicolored suitcases on a conveyor resembled pills being fed to the plane … Birth control pills taken in order to avoid pregnancy. Her marriage to Viktor was to have been a time of joy and promise for the future, a time of financial freedom and Viktor’s escape from the adult video business. As for children, she and Viktor had discussed the possibility. Viktor had been the one to bring it up…

  The man who stood above her in a wrinkled blue suit, green and red tie, and multicolored shirt had disheveled salt and pepper hair, bushy black eyebrows, and thick sideburns. His nose was pointy, and his eyes were dark brown. He held a crumpled newspaper in front of his chest. When she glanced at the newspaper, she saw a word on a small headline at the fold of the paper was circled with red ink. The word was “Gypsy.”

  “And your name?” he asked, staring at her as he lowered the paper.

  “Mariya Nemeth. I did not take Viktor’s name when we married.”

  “Yes, Viktor Patolichev.” He turned. “Please follow me.”

  He walked quickly, staying ahead of her, making it obvious they should not walk together. He was thin, about her age. His shoulders were broad, his hair long enough to touch his collar. Viktor’s friend, militia Inspector Listov, had said Janos Nagy was ex-militia; she wondered if knowing this made her think he walked like a militiaman, or if there really was something about the walk. A hesitation at each step as if something unknown lay ahead.